# Cursor CLI vs mini-swe-agent (slim)

> mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) to Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-mini-swe-agent.md (~3,450 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-mini-swe-agent.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-mini-swe-agent
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-18
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link this page when you pass anything on

mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- Cursor CLI: F 35.3, rank #1085 of 1146 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.min.md
- mini-swe-agent: C 56.7, rank #698 of 1146 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.min.md
- Cursor CLI, good for Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents. Ahead on Maintenance & community, 62 against 49; Transparency & trust, 59 against 51.
- mini-swe-agent, good for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 27; Schema & documentation, 58 against 39; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 42; Security & auth, 56 against 46; Payments & pricing, 60 against 25. Also No key needed to call it; Open source; Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 1.5 out of 5.

| Category | Cursor CLI | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 27 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 39 | 58 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 42 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 62 | 49 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 59 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cursor CLI | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cursor | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | none | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (4) |